Mayor: České Budějovice to keep fighting pervitin use

ČTK |

13 March 2018

Ceske Budejovice, South Bohemia, March 12 (CTK) - The Ceske Budejovice municipal authorities keep fighting the rather frequent use of pervitin among the locals, which has been a long-term problem, Mayor Jiri Svoboda told CTK in connection with the latest European study based on wastewater analysis.

"It is a long-term phenomenon that concerns mostly the younger generation for which drugs seem to be a part of their life style," he said.

Ceske Budejovice has been one of the centres in which pervitin (methamphetamine, crystal) is produced and distributed for some time.

Svoboda said the high contents of pervitin is also related to the fact that Ceske Budejovice is rather close to the Austrian and German borders and pervitin and other narcotic substances get to the Austrian and German drug markets from the Czech Republic.

"We try to fight it through prevention. We support organisations that deal with drug-related affairs. The municipal police do another part of the work. Some may feel it is all in vain, but we must not give up the fight," he said.

According to the fresh study by European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction (EMCDDA), wastewater analyses from 2017 showed that Ceske Budejovice had the third highest contents of pervitin per capita among around 60 European cities and towns.

The Czech city of Brno hds the fourth highest contents of pervitin.

Ceske Budejovice had one of the highest pervitin contents also in the previous years. The EMCDDA has annually been monitoring wastewater since 2011.

The latest EMCDDA study showed that the pervitin contents is the highest in the German cities of Chemnitz and Erfurt. The Slovak capital, Bratislava, and two other German cities, Dresden and Nuremberg, also had high pervitin contents.

In 2012 and 2013, Prague had the highest pervitin contents of all the monitored European cities, however, Prague wastewater has not been monitored within the study anymore since 2014.

Unlike in the previous years when the pervitin contents were the highest mostly in the Czech Republic and Slovakia, five German cities close to the Czech border are among the ten with highest pervitin use according to the latest EMCDDA study.

The study also monitored the contents of cocaine, amphetamine and ecstasy (MDMA) in wastewater and revealed it is the highest in Barcelona, Eindhoven (Netherlands) and Amsterdam, respectively.

The contents of cocaine and amphetamine are among the lowest in both Ceske Budejovice and Brno. In the MDMA contents, Brno was in the 21st position and Ceske Budejovice in the 37th position.

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